Why Google Glass is so important

Every tech blog, news site, magazine and newspaper is writing about Google Glass. Half are saying good things half are saying bad things.

But there's one thing they all agree on: Mentioning Google Glass in a headline gets you readers.

You're reading this. Right? I bet a whole lot of you don't always read my blog but you are reading this post, right?

Writing about the success or failure of Google Glass is fantastic for many reasons:

It's low cost. You don't have to spend $1,500 on one. Just read other people's blogs and repeat what they've said, speculate, or just make shit up!

You are automatically correct. The product hasn't been released yet. Nothing you say can be "wrong" right now. Say that the actual sale price will be $10 million dollars or ten cents. You win! They, that's a good idea, actually. Someone should write a blog post saying they heard the final price will be ten cents! It isn't a lie, because you read it here. Just think of how famous you'll be for writing such an article!

When you are proven wrong, nobody will care. When Google Glass actually ships nobody is going to go back through all the articles written now and see who was wrong and who was right. If someone were to do this, those that were wrong aren't going to be fired or anything. It works this way outside of the tech world too! Heck, every person I saw on the Sunday morning political pundit shows last weekend has been proven wrong on whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or wrong on the housing bubble, or wrong on TONS of things. Yet instead of banning them from ever speaking on economics, politics or foreign policy people like David Gregory just keep inviting them back! The tech world is even worse. Search around and see who predicted (in some cases vehemently!) that any of these products would fail: iPod, iPad, Android, Linux, the mouse, graphical user interfaces. Now take that list of authors and see which of them are still fully employed. All of them! Heck, I still remember John C. Dvorak mocking the Amiga for having multitasking... a feature he claimed nobody would want and nobody could use because "computers only have one keyboard". People still hire him! (I'm sure he never runs two programs at the same time because, he's like... consistent.)

Everyone else is doing it! Look! Now even I'm doing it! And yes, Mom, if everyone else jumped off a bridge I would too. The bridges in our neighborhood are all pretty darn low.

So take my advice: Mock it or praise it, parody it or deify it, make shit up or do actual research. Whatever you do, just write about Google Glass.

If you've a lazy editor and you've longed for the halcyon days of the early years of Java, with articles with "clever" titles like "What's brewing with Java", now you'll be able to talk about "Google's future clear as Glass", or you can express disappointment in an article title "Glass half empty", or when the first big bug is find, "Analysts warn of dangers of broken Glass".